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January 24, 2006
In the Year of the Oil Boom, Some SRI Funds Look Elsewhere for Strong Performance in 2005
by William Baue
The top-performing socially responsible investing funds compared to their category peers (SRI and
non-SRI alike) drew strong performance from pharma, tech, and financials.
SocialFunds.com --
Traditional energy stocks were on fire in 2005, a trend that prompted Congress to haul oil company
executives up Capitol Hill to explain what looked like price gouging and profiteering in the
aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Socially responsible investing (SRI) mutual funds tend
to screen out traditional energy stocks due to adverse environmental impacts, and thus missed out
on this trend. However, SRI funds such as Winslow Green Growth (ticker: WGGFX), Calvert Large Cap
Growth (CLGAX), Citizens Core Growth
(WAIDX),
Flex Funds Total Return Utilities (FLRUX), Aquinas Growth (AQEGX), New
Alternatives (NALFX), and Pax World Balanced
(PAXWX)
identified alternative trends to fuel strong performance in 2005.
 "SRI funds for the most part are going to be underweight
in energy versus their non-screened rivals, and obviously energy was the big story last year,
outperforming just about everything else in the market," said Greg Carlson, an analyst for fund
rating firm Morningstar who covers SRI.
Mr. Carlson's colleague Bill Rocco, who also analyzes SRI funds for Morningstar, expounds
on the larger context of how SRI sector allocation affects the evaluation of SRI fund performance.
"It is very difficult to generalize about SRI performance, as you have different screens
ranging from politically progressive to religiously conservative," Mr. Rocco told SocialFunds.com.
"You really have to compare funds to their category peers by looking at percentile rankings, and
even then you have to take a closer look to see if there are significant differences that can drive
performance." Percentile rankings compare performance within fund categories, so a 1st percentile
fund outperformed 99 percent of its peers--both SRI and non-SRI.
"The SRI screens can
indeed make them different, primarily because of the sector weighting," says Mr. Rocco, echoing Mr.
Carlson. "The typical SRI screen tends to push you toward things like software and healthcare and
away from things like energy."
Indeed, of the 60-odd broadly-screened SRI funds tracked by
SocialFunds.com, the top three equity funds percentile-wise in one-year performance for the period
ending December 31, 2005 (according to data provided by Thomson Financial Network) all reflect such
sector allocations. The Winslow Green Growth Fund, an aggressive growth small- and mid-cap fund
that placed in the 10th percentile with 12.18 percent one-year returns, devotes almost a quarter
(23.88 percent) of its portfolio to pharmaceutical and
biotechnology companies.
Technology companies comprise more than a quarter (28 percent) of
the Calvert Large Cap Growth Fund, which placed in the 14th percentile with 11.07 percent one-year
returns. And financial institutions make up almost 20
percent of the Citizens Core Growth Fund, which placed in the 19th percentile with 9.63 percent
one-year returns.
Of these three funds, this last fund has the highest percentage of
energy holdings at 10.6 percent.
"The Citizens Core Growth Fund actually has a pretty
sizable stake in energy, more so than the S&P 500 and more so than its large growth category," Mr.
Carlson told SocialFunds.com. The fund does not include major oil companies such as ExxonMobil (XOM) or Chevron (CVX), which are the
subject of numerous shareowner resolutions on environmental and social issues this proxy season.
The fund's top energy holding is Questar (STR), which deals in natural gas, a
cleaner energy source than oil that makes it more likely to pass SRI screens, according to Mr.
Carlson. "I would expect that this degree of exposure to energy did help fuel outperformance."
Both the Winslow and Calvert funds had strong three-year percentile rankings and
performance as well, with the Winslow fund placing in the 1st percentile with 34.09 percent
annualized returns and the Calvert fund placing in the 7th percentile with 21.45 percent annualized
returns.
Other top 25th percentile SRI equity funds in 2005 include the Flex Funds Total
Return Utilities, which placed in the 20th percentile with 16.8 percent returns, Aquinas Growth,
which placed in the 22nd percentile with 9.15 percent returns, and New Alternatives, which placed
in the 24th percentile with 8.94 percent returns.
The top-ranking balanced fund was the
Pax World Balanced Fund, which placed in the 25th percentile with 5.39 percent returns in 2005.
Mr. Rocco attributed this fund's outperformance to heavier-than-normal exposure to equities as
compared to bonds, as equities performed better than bonds in 2005. Also, the fund rode the strong
performance of international markets with a higher concentration of foreign holdings than most
balanced funds.
Interestingly, none of the international SRI funds tracked by
SocialFunds.com placed in the top 25th percentile.
"There are so few international SRI
funds, and they tend to have high costs," explained Mr. Carlson.
Finally, two SRI bond
funds broke the top 25th percentile in 2005: the Calvert Social Bond Fund (CSIBX), which placed in the
2nd percentile with 4.51 percent returns, and the Parnassus Fixed Income Fund (PRFIX), which placed in the
12th percentile with 2.55 percent returns.
©
SRI World Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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